Coming Home
by phoenixfyre13
Summary: Remus has a discussion with Bill that puts his relationship with Tonks in perspective. Will it be enough to start healing the wounds of the past? R/T, post-HBP.


Remus Lupin sat in the kitchen at the Burrow, staring contemplatively at his cup of tea in the flickering lamplight as the wind rustled the bushes against the side of the house. The scrape of the branches and quiet swishing of the leaves set a soothing rhythm in the otherwise silent house, aside from the occasional creak and groan of a floorboard. He glanced up as he heard the creaking pick up a rhythm of its own, and he smiled as his thoughts on the cause were confirmed with a muffled thump and curse from the stairwell.

Tonks appeared in the doorway a moment later, looking ruffled and bleary-eyed, rubbing her right foot as she leaned on the doorjamb for support. "Blimey, Remus," she said sleepily, her eyes finally focusing on him. "What on earth are you doing up? It's bleedin' three in the morning."

Remus' brow creased a little. "I didn't mean to wake you, love. I just – I couldn't sleep. Thought I'd try a cup of tea."

Tonks moved over to the kitchen table and plopped down across from him, placing her elbows on the worn wood and propping her chin on her hands. "Anything you want to talk about?"

Remus looked across at her, noting that her eyes had lost the glazed look of sleep and were studying him curiously. "It's…nothing, really." He looked back down into his cup. "Just thinking about the wedding."

"Three days couldn't pass fast enough," Tonks moaned. "I swear, if I have to hear Fleur's opinion on my hair choice, or the floral arrangements, or Molly's cake coming out tasteful, I am going to hex that girl back onto the bloody continent." She stopped, her fingers splayed across her face, and peeked through her fingers at Remus, who was grinning ruefully at her across the table. "But I have a feeling that's not what's keeping you up all night, eh?"

Remus shook his head. "I'm…concerned. About Bill."

Tonks dropped her hands from her face and gave him her full attention. "Is he worse? I thought Molly said his scars were – "

"They're as well as they are going to get," Remus assured, taking a sip of his tea. He stared back at the table, examining the grains in the wood, smoothed by time and use and dozens of hands. Bill Weasley had grown up around this table, had eaten in this very spot, played Exploding Snap with his brothers, and just that evening had admitted to Remus his fears of marriage, of living as a man with a disease, of the still unknown consequences of that fateful battle. Remus frowned as he remembered the look of unabashed fear in Bill's eyes as he voiced his greatest terror, one that he himself shared about the woman sitting across from him.

_When I think of what I might become…I can't hurt her._

How many times had that thought tortured Remus himself, as lay on the hard earth and stared mindlessly into the glowing embers of the tiny fire he had made to keep himself from freezing in the dank, foul-smelling lair he had called home for the better part of a year? How many images of Tonks, bloody and dying beneath him, had woken him up night after night, his mouth open in a silent scream and sweat pouring from his lean frame? He knew. He knew that fear better than any other.

That fear had ripped him apart body and soul, had robbed her of her smile, her light, her joy. Even now, when they were laughing and joking with one another in bed, the afterglow of sex still heavy in the air around them and shining on their skin, the light of her smile never quite reached her eyes. The wounds he had inflicted were still there, under the surface, still oozing with the infection of doubt and self-loathing. In those times, he was filled with such a sudden sense of loss he couldn't bring himself to look her in the eye. Not when he knew there was something missing, something he had torn away, that he wasn't sure he could get back.

In that moment earlier that evening, looking across the table at Bill, seeing that same fear reflected in his eyes, he had known what to say. Now if only he could say it to the person who needed to hear it the most.

Tonks reached her hand across the table and gripped his, snapping him out of his reverie. Her eyes were bright with concern as she looked at him. "What's going to happen to him?" she murmured. "I was hoping him coming back home today would help, make it easier, but he still seems so…changed. I dunno," she sighed, slumping back in her chair and swiping her free hand through her bright pink locks. "Do you – I mean, do you have any experience with this type of…thing?"

Remus returned her squeeze, glancing down at their hands as he struggled for an answer. "I don't know, love, I really don't. It could be as simple as getting moody once a month. I really don't think he will experience any of the normal side effects of being a full-fledged werewolf. But it's very hard to convince someone who has been attacked that they haven't lost their future."

"His future is up to him," Tonks replied bluntly, and Remus knew immediately from the shadow that flashed through her eyes that she was thinking of someone other than the eldest Weasley child. "Fleur is there for him. She loves him now as much as before." Tonks looked him directly in the eye and held his hand in a steel grip. "She's not going anywhere."

Remus looked closely at the woman sitting across from him, knowing fully, in that instant, that what she said about Fleur – about herself – was the truth. "He's just scared," he whispered, for once not breaking eye contact across the table. Those wounds inside Tonks were still there, try as she might to hide them, and Remus knew it was now or never to start fixing them. He continued on, voicing what he had finally begun to feel in his core the minute he said the words to Bill earlier that evening. "But I told him that his fear of the unknown, of what _might_ happen, would not stop her love for him, and should not keep him from doing what's right." Remus smiled a little as Tonks' eyes softened. "The monster will only control him if he lets it."

Tonks didn't say anything for a minute. The smallest of smiles began to play on her lips, finally reaching her eyes as Remus brushed his thumb over her knuckles. He found himself choking back a lump set deep in his throat. He hadn't seen her smile that way in so long, he'd almost forgotten what it looked like, what it felt like.

_Like coming home. _As much as the smell of chocolate and cinnamon and burning wood, the sound of his mother's laugh and his father's baritone – the sight of Tonks' smile was home. How foolish of him, to think he would ever forget that twinkle of bright onyx, that crinkle around the eyes that had kept him sane all those months.

"He won't let it," she whispered, her voice brimming with the confidence of a woman in love.

"No, I don't think he will," murmured Remus, bringing her hand to his lips and brushing a kiss on her palm. "Not anymore. Now that he's come back home."

They sat that way for a long time, her hand caressing his cheek, his eyes not leaving hers as they silently said more than words could express, the balm of quiet and perfect understanding working its own type of magic. Tonks finally stood and pulled him with her, and she led him back upstairs, as Remus finally came home.


End file.
